


Earth Begins (Sadness Not Yet Intended)

by murron



Series: My Way Home Is Through You [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M, Pre-Slash, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-26
Updated: 2012-03-26
Packaged: 2017-11-02 13:37:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/369549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/murron/pseuds/murron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas didn’t need sleep but he hadn’t known that for a while. Coda to 7.17</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earth Begins (Sadness Not Yet Intended)

**Author's Note:**

> spoilers: up to and including 7.17  
> standard disclaimers apply
> 
> EXTRA WARNINGS: Graphic depictions of violence, torture, gore, mind games

Cas didn’t need sleep but he hadn’t known that for a while. Over the nine months he’d been living with Daphne he’d gone to bed with her, closed his eyes, like her, and drifted into a deep, dark calm that he’d assumed was sleep. He’d woken up at sunrise, each day without exception, and it was those moments he’d liked best. He remembered the window in their bedroom and the curtains that they never closed, allowing him an immediate glance at the sky. He remembered the soft light of the early hours, the warmth of the bedsheets under his palm and the faint scent of Daphne’s body lotion. He’d been at peace in his own body, his mind focusing on nothing but the soft give of the pillow under his head. He’d get up and walk through the quiet house, down the stairs and into the kitchen.  
  
In late spring, the sun caught on the kitchen appliances, tiny drops of light clinging to the faucet and the stainless steel ladles that Daphne kept in a jar. The cold tiles under his feet had given him goosebumps but Cas hadn’t cared.  
  
His wife had tea for breakfast and so had he. Cas used to brew his first mug of Assam before he opened the window, the flowers in the windowbox nodding as the window slid up. Daphne had planted wild flowers, marigolds, daisies and cornflowers and they drew dozens of butterflies. Cas had learned their names from a book Daphne had given him. Heather Blues, Cranberry Blues, Swallowtails and Vein Whites.  
  
One of the colorful specimen, a Yellow Sulphur, had once tumbled into the kitchen and danced in a beam of sunlight like a paper toy on a string. It seemed weightless, buoyed up by the air and the swift beat of its wings. Cas thought of that as Lucifer knelt beside him, his hands buried wrist-deep in Cas’ entrails.  
  
They were on the floor or so Cas believed. He couldn’t always tell if his eyes and ears told him the truth. The pain was real enough though.  
  
Lucifer sighed and sat back on his thighs. “Does this do anything for you?” he asked. He lifted one hand from the gash he’d burrowed into Cas’ belly and scratched the side of his nose, leaving a red smear on his cheek.  
  
“Yeah, I know.” Lucifer said. “I used to have more imagination.”  
  
The fingers that were still buried inside Cas curled idly and pain built in his midsection like a heavy cloud, twisting every nerve and tendon inside his body. It burned, too, tongues of fire licking from his middle down his thighs and up into the cavity of his chest. He heard the slick, slapping sounds of Lucifer’s hand rummaging through his flesh and his lungs squeezed tight, his breath catching in his throat.  
  
Cas stared at the ceiling and accepted the agony, allowing it to fill him like water filled a glass. He could bear it. Whatever Lucifer did, it couldn’t erase the peace Cas had found in his heart, his whole heart which beat now only so he could make amends for his mistakes, the scores of people he had hurt. This was the way, Cas knew. He’d put himself between Sam and the devil. It felt right.  
  
Lucifer looked down at him and tilted his head with a small, amused smile. “Redemption, huh?” he asked. “You think that’s what’s going to happen here?”  
  
He sounded almost like he pitied Cas, his voice soft and regretful. Cas frowned, the devil’s face blurring as his eyesight lost its focus. He blinked and all of a sudden, Lucifer leaned right over him. Cas flinched and felt a flicker of fear, the echo of something primal that had already told him to run when he’d first set eyes on his brother in Sam’s bed.  
  
Leaning closer still, Lucifer tsked and patted Cas’ cheek with a wet palm. “You little dreamer, you.”  
  
He was so close now Cas felt his ice-cold breath on his face and smelled the stench of rotten flesh and brimstone that seemed to fester in Lucifer’s mouth. Lucifer smoothed his fingertips down Cas’ cheek and side of his throat before he flattened his hand against Cas’ breastbone.  
  
Heart thundering in his chest, Cas tried to squirm away but his legs wouldn’t move. Something thrashed and fluttered inside him, though, struggling hard to get away. His grace, Cas realized with a flash of terror, Lucifer was calling his grace to the surface, drawing it to his palm, into his reach--  
  
“Hush, now,” Lucifer murmured. Cas gasped, feeling the devil’s fingers skim through the barrier of his body, a barrier that had suddenly become flimsy and unsubstantial, before he placed one fingertip against his the faint shimmer of his grace. Lucifer’s touch was almost gentle, coaxing Cas’ grace from its hiding place, compelling it to unfold. Cas tried in vain to keep it contained, its glow spread and eased beyond the borders of his vessel, unfurling like a fernleaf in the sun. Cas could see the bright reflection of his essence in Lucifer’s eyes. His brother smiled again and framed Cas’ face in both hands.  
  
“Show me your wings, Cas.”  
  
  
  


:  :  :

 

 

Nothing, no thought, just blazing pain, agony beyond comprehension cresting and crashing like breakers.

“You’re a good toy, brother. You don’t break and I know how you tick. When I pull this joint and bend this bone oh ho, I know exactly what it does to you.”

Something shattered, maybe the lamps overhead, maybe the windows, maybe it’s just the sound of his voice. Outside, above, no longer a part of him.

Something shrill, like the wind screeching in the rafters.

“Mmmh, that sounded like it hurt.”

 

 

: : :

 

 

 _He’s not real_ , Sam had said before he and Dean had left. The younger Winchester had squeezed Cas’ hand, despair and compassion written all over his face despite Cas’ assurance that he was free now, that he could go with his steps unshadowed. _He’s not real_ , Sam had repeated. _You’ve got to remember that_.

“And you believe him?” Lucifer asked. He perched on the edge of a little table with his legs crossed and his arms folded in front of his chest. Cas lay on his belly, stretched out on the bed, his broken, slow healing wings trailing on the floor. Every time he breathed, splintered bones scraped against his sinews and sparked fresh pain. His wings didn’t really have bones, of course, but somehow Lucifer knew how to solidify Cas’ grace, to give it shape and substance. Although the nurses still didn’t see Cas’ feathers and their feet went right through them when they walked across the room.

Because his wings were invisible.

No, because all of this happened in his head.

Watching Cas, Lucifer pulled down the corners of his mouth and shrugged. “Sam’s a troubled kid you know. I heard he spent some time in a closed ward.” He hopped off the table and came closer, stepping on Cas’ pinions along the way. Cas curled his fists into the bedsheet, his fingers digging into the mattress.

“I would take Sam’s advice with a grain of salt,” Lucifer finished. “That’s all I’m saying.”

 

 

: : :

 

 

Lucifer had talked to him for hours, his voice deep and scratchy, droning on in Enochian, reciting old, dark chants of slaughter and destruction. Once God had compelled his angels in the Enochian tongue, his voice like thunder in their veins, vibrating through their very being and breathing purpose into their heart. The devil whispered that same language into Cas’ ear, using words of power and coercion, vowels and hissing sounds trickling into his blood like flakes of ash.

Cas cowered in a corner of the room with his hands over his ears but of course he couldn’t block out the noise nor could he stop the sensation of Lucifer’s words skittering over his skin.

“Open your eyes,” Lucifer said.

“No.”

“Castiel,” Lucifer said, using Cas’ real name, the word that first created him and it grated over Cas’ senses like a wire brush. “You don’t have to fight me.”

Lucifer sat beside Cas, tapping Cas’ bare foot with his from time to time just to watch Cas wince. Hunching his shoulders, Cas pressed the heels of his hands against his ears as hard as he could.

“Let me tell you what you did, little brother,” Lucifer said. “When you raised Sam’s shell from perdition, you left his soul behind. But you also took something extra that didn’t belong to him. Something tiny, a down feather, really.” Lucifer shifted, bringing his mouth so close to Cas’ cheek Cas felt his lips move. Cas turned away but wedged into the angle of two walls he couldn’t evade his brother. “See, when you pulled Sam from the cage, we were wrapped round and round each other,” Lucifer continued. “Real tight. Like those twisting vines that choke the life out of a piece of green wood. So when you snatched Sam you also tore off a small part of me, hitchhiking in Sam’s carcass like a parasite. Or a seed.” Lucifer pondered. “That sounds so much nicer, doesn’t it? Yes, a seed.”

“You’re lying.”

Lucifer clucked his tongue and withdrew, flicking his hand against Cas’ knee in reproach. “Haven’t we gone over this? I never lie, Castiel. Why should I?”

Cas bit the inside of his lip and tried to breathe through the ache in his heart, suffering not from physical harm this time but doubt. Could it be, was it possible he’d been so careless that he’d ferried part of Lucifer back to Earth? Wouldn’t he have noticed, wouldn’t he have felt the spot of wrongness inside Sam?

“Like you noticed the absence of his soul?” Lucifer scoffed. “Please. You’ve been as eager and blind as a bat chasing a fruitfly. Arrogant, too, although I like that streak in my father’s offspring. It reminds me of someone.” He paused, then added in a mock-musing tone, “Now who was that?”

Lucifer’s words brought it all back to life, the day Cas descended into Hell a second time to reach out his hand for Sam. Once again, Cas saw his fingers close over Sam’s shoulder, gentler this time because he had learned. He remembered Sam turning to him, his eyes wide with gratitude. Only now Cas’ memory seemed changed and he also glimpsed a pinpickred light in the center of Sam’s pupils, a cold, alien brightness that didn’t belong to the younger Winchester.

“Free at last,” Lucifer whispered, leaning over for a moment so his breath pushed against Cas’ knuckles. Cas whimpered.

“Now cooling my heels behind that wall, that wasn’t fun,” Lucifer sniffed. “But voila, you broke that down too. You know, I never realized, but you’re very helpful, little brother.”

 _I brought him here_ , Cas thought with growing despair. _I carried him out of the Cage_.

Lucifer shuffled up to his side and pressed his shoulder against Cas like an overfriendly cat. “Well,” he said. “Not _all_ of me. I still can’t walk around on my own, can’t ride the carrousel without my pa and all that. All I could do to Sam was nag, really. It nearly killed him but hey, girl’s got to get her kicks somehow right?” He propped his arm on Cas’ bent knee with a good-natured flourish. “But now this,” he whistled, “you, me? This has potential.”

If Cas could only hold on to anything outside this room, a memory or an image that didn’t shrivel under Lucifer’s attention, he’d be able to protect himself better. As it was, he had trouble sending his thoughts further than the cream linoleum on the floor. Cas shivered, his muscles quivering and his lips trembling. He called on his common sense, grasping for the knowledge that he was hallucinating like he would hold on to a lifeline. He couldn’t curb his thoughts, though, couldn’t stop Lucifer’s narration echoing in his head.

 _I brought a drop of the devil back into the world_ , Cas thought. And now that he’d taken that drop from Sam into himself, would it not corrupt his grace, clog up his senses like the souls of Purgatory?

 _It’s just your fear_ , he told himself. _You imagine what frightens you the most_. But he couldn’t believe it.

“You could be my nurturing soil Cas,” Lucifer crooned. “Your grace, my brains? We could take over the world, Pinky.”

“No.”

Lucifer sighed and tipped his forehead against the fingers that Cas still cupped over his ears. “Embrace me Cas,” he urged. “I could color the inside of you like a dye. You’d be powerful with me.” When Cas tensed but didn’t say anything, Lucifer drew back and pouted. “I’ll just keep asking you know.”

Cas put his hands over his face and curled into the wall to his left, trying to get away from Lucifer’s overbearing presence. His brother followed him, cold radiating off his body as he brushed the tip of his nose over the nape of Cas’ neck.

“It’s not like I’m going anywhere,” he said. “Castiel.”

 

 

: : :

 

 

Cas didn’t know how much time passed, the light in his room never seemed to change, it was always dim, always gray, exuding from the neon lamp or the frosted glass window. Why people in a psychiatric ward shouldn’t be allowed to look out at the street he couldn’t imagine.

He rarely used his bed anymore and sat with his back against the wall instead. It made it harder for Lucifer to get to the joints of Cas’ wings. Today, Cas had also wrapped his arms around his knees because that made him smaller.

Lucifer sat on the far side of the bed, his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. He was puffing air into his cheeks and expelled it with loud, popping noises, keeping up a steady cacophony of senseless noise.

“Trust me,” he said. “If you’d seen Shrek you’d think this was funny too.”

Cas lowered his head to his knees and concentrated on the coarse fabric of his scrubs against his forehead.

“Are we there yet?” Lucifer yelled and brayed with laughter.

Compared with his usual routines, it was almost a reprieve. Cas was so absorbed by the liberty of not being poked or prodded or torn at that he didn’t even react to the hand that settled on his arm. He felt the fingertips stroke hesitantly over his bare skin but it was the use of his name that made him start.

“Cas?” The hand vanished when Cas flinched but came back to close around his wrist. “Cas, hey.”

At this, he looked up and found himself face to face with Dean.

It took Cas a few seconds to comprehend what he saw, to accept the sudden appearance of someone other than Lucifer. Dean was clean-shaven as usual but his hair lay matted against his head, a few strands sticking up where Dean must have run his hand through it. He wore the default flannel and his jeans had a tear over one knee. As he crouched in front of Cas, his shadow screened off the glare from the neon rod above their heads. Cas drew a breath and marveled at the warmth of Dean’s hand, the calloused pads of his fingertips against the inside of his wrist.

“Dean?”

“Yeah,” Dean said, and let go. “Hey.” He struggled to get his face under control but the shape he found Cas in seemed to shake him up bad. Strangely enough, though, the worry on Dean’s face helped Cas to become aware of himself again, calling his attention to his bare feet, the hems of his pants against his ankles and the dryness of his lips. His grace hung like a lead weight at his center, calm and steadied.

 _I’m still me_ , Cas confirmed to himself.

“What are you doing here?” he asked Dean, hearing his own voice rasp as though he hadn’t used it in days. Maybe he hadn’t.

“Practicing my bedside manner,” Dean quipped, and dropped his hand to his knee.

“Is it visiting hours?”

“No.” Dean frowned, troubled, perhaps because Cas didn’t know the time of day. “It’s night, Cas. Meg let me in.” He touched Cas’ elbow. “Do you want to get up?”

Cas eased his arms off his legs and nodded. “All right.”

Unfolding from the floor, Cas had to rely more on Dean’s strength than he had anticipated. Dean helped him all the way to his bed, holding his arm until Cas had levered both legs unto the mattress. Cas pulled his knees to his chest again and refused to look at the side of the room where he’d last seen Lucifer.

Fetching the only chair in the room, Dean sat down beside Cas’ bed. His gaze swept down from Cas’ face to the ID bracelet around his wrist and the veins that stood out on the back of his hands. It was obvious that he wanted to ask how Cas was holding up but he didn’t quite get out the words.

“How is Sam?” Cas asked, saving Dean the trouble to enquire for an answer he feared to hear.

Dean sighed and some of the tension seemed to seep from his shoulders. “Good,” he said. “He’s, he’s really good Cas.”

He rubbed a hand over his eyes, a quick gesture that gave Cas an idea how long Dean had been forced to watch his brother suffer. Cas tried to recall the state of mind that had driven him to curse Sam by the removal of the wall but for the live of him he couldn’t reconstruct any of the reasons or why they’d seemed so important at the time. He wished with all his heart that he could undo the damage, not just lift it off Sam at the eleventh hour, but go back in time and make it so it never happened.

How far would he have to go back though? Back to the minute he placed his hand against Sam’s temple or beyond, to the day he’d freed half of Sam from Hell or the night he’d released him from Bobby’s panic room?

He’d done Dean’s brother so much wrong.

Cas swallowed, his throat tight and raw. “Is he sleeping?” he asked.

Dean laughed a little. “Like a log,” he said. “Last motel we were in, he snored so loud the neighbors knocked on the wall.”

Cas smiled as Dean’s answer opened a window to the motel room Sam had slept in, most likely on his belly with his feet hanging over the edge of the mattress. If past experience had taught Cas anything, that room would be decorated with some sort of plastic animals, maybe ducks, and a wallpaper of supreme ugliness. He’d spent a lot of time with Dean and Sam in rooms like that, Cas mused. Halfway to falling, he’d shared pizza dinners with the Winchesters as they worked on the newest case or watched what Dean called ‘quality TV’. Cas tilted his head in surprise. He’d forgotten they’d enjoyed each other’s company once.

Shifting his gaze to Dean, Cas searched for the man he’d been during the first years of their friendship, the brazen, defiantly beautiful human who’d told Cas to screw destiny, right in the face. Little, if any of that Dean had survived. Sorrow and loss had worn him thin, each care written on his pale face. Cas took in the shadows under Dean’s eyes, the strained set of his mouth and understood with a pang that Dean was finally crumbling under the weight of the world.

Cas knew he harbored more emotions than most angels but he had no idea he had the capacity to feel so much regret. He wanted to reach out to Dean, create some kind of connection, but remembering Dean’s appreciation of personal space he kept his hands to himself. “What about you?” Cas asked. “How do you sleep?”

Dean had become less demonstrative with his body language during the time Cas hadn’t seen him but he did recoil at Cas’ question. He dropped his gaze and a muscle twitched in his jaw. “Cas,” he said. Pleaded, almost. “Don’t worry about me, okay. You just--”

“--get better?” Cas finished. He didn’t need to put into words that recovery wasn’t on the table. They both knew. Maybe it would have been kinder to tell Dean that he’d muddle through somehow, but Cas was done lying to his friend.

Dean clenched his fists on his thighs and when he looked up again, something had hardened in his eyes. It was a shadow of the determination Dean had possessed back in the Green Room, but a shadow was better than nothing. “We’ll fix this Cas,” he insisted. “We’ll find a way.”

To his surprise, Cas found that he believed him. Everything he knew told him there was no way to purge Lucifer from his mind but, yes, he still trusted Dean’s promise. Putting his faith in Dean had always been easy, from the day they met it had been his first instinct. Cas lowered his head, carefully holding on to the flicker of hope until a sharp pain in his shoulder cut through his calm. Cas shot a look at the wall before he could stop himself. Lucifer still sat there with his face contorted in a mask of distaste. He had the tip of Cas’ left wing trapped in his fist, twisting the feathers so the quills tore at Cas’ flesh. Ignoring his brother, Cas turned back to Dean.

“If anyone can,” Cas said and smiled again.

This time when Lucifer yanked at his wing it felt like he was going to rip the bone right off. Cas clenched his teeth and refused to acknowledge the pain that stabbed into his back. His face must’ve betrayed him, though, because Dean creased his brow and reached for Cas’ arm. He held Cas’ gaze until Lucifer left off. As the pain receded, Cas swallowed hard and Dean leaned closer. He stroked Cas’ hair out of his forehead and smoothed his thumb over Cas’ temple, soothing him without words.

He’d never done that, never touched Cas so deliberately or for so long. Cas let out a shaky breath, his pulse thrumming at the gentleness of Dean’s fingers combing through his hair. It was so very welcome.

When Dean sat back, Cas raised his hand and touched his fingertips to Dean’s shoulder where his hand had left a scar.

“You took that away, remember?” Dean said quietly. “Wiped it off when you fixed me after Sam’s swan dive.”

“I remember,” Cas said. He fitted his palm over Dean’s biceps, felt the rub of his sleeve and the resistance of the smooth skin underneath.

Dean looked at him with an expression Cas couldn’t read. “I thought it meant goodbye,” he said.

Cas’ heart sunk, realizing that his actions had given Dean another wrong message. “It didn’t.”

When he’d left Dean after Sam’s sacrifice he hadn’t expected to be gone that long. One thing led to another, though, first his headlong raid of Hell, then his quarrel with Raphael and when next he’d found time to drop down into Lisa Braeden’s backyard he’d already been too troubled to show himself.

So much regret.

Following his impulse this time, Cas put his hand against the side of Dean’s face and Dean closed his eyes for a second. In the weeks before Cas’ harrowing of Purgatory they’d been harsh and hard with each other, frustrated by the other’s failure to see their own side. But at one time they’d been tuned into each other’s hopes and worries, giving and receiving support when they needed it. Cas was grateful for the reminder of their friendship, for this brief moment of reconnection.

Dean didn’t lean into Cas’ touch but he didn’t move away either. He sat still until Cas removed his hand but Cas had a feeling that he understood the gist of the things Cas wanted him to know. I’m sorry. I never stopped caring. I don’t regret coming back now. It was enough.

“This is bedside manner?” Cas asked and leaned back against his pillow.

Dean snorted and opened his eyes. “Sort of.” He bowed down and picked a newspaper off the floor. “I brought this,” he said. “Thought maybe I could read to you.”

“To distract me,” Cas inferred.

Dean nodded, his cheeks blushing just a little. “Background noise seemed to help Sam sometimes.”

He held the folded newspaper in both hands as if he waited for Cas’ to tell him what a stupid idea this was. Cas considered the bold headlines between Dean’s fingers, then stretched his arm for his nightstand and picked up the paperback one of the nurses had left for him. “Can you read this instead?”

Dean raised a brow but reached for the book all the same. “Sure.”

“Oh, come on,” Lucifer cried out. “Really?”

Cas pressed his lips together and watched Dean leaf through the dog-eared paperback.

“Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption, huh?” Dean said and smiled. “How far have you got with this?”

“I started with the first few pages,” Cas said, forcing himself not to raise his voice over Lucifer’s repeated calls of his name. “But I couldn’t really concentrate.”

“Okay then,” Dean said. He folded back the book’s cover and started at the top. His voice was gruff and hesitant at first but morphed into a smoother cadence as he continued, taking the words in long, sure strides. Cas lay back and rested his head against his pillow. He focused on Dean’s voice and for a while it worked but Lucifer kept bugling his name, _CasCasCasCasCASCAS_ , louder and louder until he seemed to yell right into Cas’ ear. Cas shut his eyes and clutched the folds of his pants until Lucifer suddenly stopped. When Cas looked up, Dean had moved from one side of the bed to the other, standing so that he blocked Cas’ view at Lucifer.

“He’s behind me, isn’t he?” Dean asked, steel in his voice.

“Yes.”

“Scoot over.”

“What?” Cas asked, startled.

“Come on,” Dean insisted and toed off his boots. “Make some room.”

Mystified, Cas shifted to one side of the mattress and watched as Dean climbed onto the bed with him. He settled with his back against the bed’s metal headboard and opened the book on his thighs, all without looking at Cas.

At first Cas was so baffled by Dean’s move that he didn’t even register that Lucifer kept his quiet. When he finally did notice, he also realized that he couldn’t see Lucifer anymore. Dean’s shoulder and drawn up legs made a perfect barrier. Cas flinched and gasped out a small sound, his surprise and relief were that strong.

If Dean heard, he didn’t comment. He began reading again, once more from the first line on, and this time, Cas heard nothing but the story.

 

 

: : :

 

 

They didn’t finish the book that night but Cas kept on reading by himself after Dean was gone. Lucifer watched him from the far side of the room but didn’t come closer, his arms crossed tightly over his chest and his face stiff with anger. Cas paid him no heed.

When the door to his room opened, Cas earmarked his page and put the novel back onto his nightstand. Meg came in with a covered tray, wearing her nurse’s uniform. She’d pulled her dark hair back in a tail and her lipstick gleamed slick and red, highlighting the tidy curl of her mouth.

“Good morning, sunshine,” she said. As always, her smile hit a perfect balance between amusement and derision.

Placing the tray on the table, she seized Cas up with a raised brow. “You look better.”

He felt better, Cas thought and folded his hands on his thighs. “Dean’s visit helped,” he admitted.

Hearing that, Meg stopped with her hands on the tray’s cover. “Dean’s what?”

“His visit,” Cas repeated. “You let him in last night.”

He expected Meg to acknowledge that and was put off when she laughed. “No, honey,” she said and lifted the cover off his breakfast tray. “The big Winchester is hunting Dick. Last thing I heard, him and Sam are over in Oregon. That’s a few thousand miles between them and us.”

Cas stared at her and did his best to make sense of what she told him. He couldn’t.

Meg observed his face and her expression softened. “Your mind’s playing tricks on you, Clarence,” she explained. “You’re seeing what you want to see.” Her smile widened and the dimples in her cheek destroyed the mask of compassion she’d put on. “Not that I blame you. If I needed a knight in shining armor I’d think of Deano too. He’s that type.”

As her words sunk in, Cas twitched violently, his arm flailing to the side and his shoulders hitting the headboard. _No_ , he thought with rising panic, no, he hadn’t imagined last night. Dean had been here, he’d read to him, he’d sat watch between Cas and Lucifer--

 _You’re seeing what you want to see_.

Cas eyes widened and his heart beat faster, fear gripping him like a fist of cold air.

Smoothing down her plain white skirt, Meg continued as if she was oblivious to his fright. “Now eat up, angel,” she said. “I brought you the nice jell-o.” She left with a wink and Cas stared at the door that closed behind her. He clung to his denial and called on the memory of Dean’s fingers carding through his hair. But suddenly it seemed so unlikely that Dean would do something like that.

 _No. Please, no. Don’t take this_.

When Cas looked up, Lucifer sat at the foot of his bed. He’d pulled up his knees and slung one arm around his legs, making a mock of the posture that had become Cas’ retreat. As Cas gaze met his, Lucifer ducked his head like a child that had been caught during a mischief and grinned.

“No,” Cas breathed, his hand skimming over the empty bedsheet beside him.

At the far end of the mattress, Lucifer grinned wider, showing too many teeth and rucking up the skin of his cheeks in folds.

  


**_end_**  
=====  
 _beta by eretria_  
(26/03/12)

*Title from the movie _Beginners_


End file.
